Too big to ignore. So why does the not-for-profit sector sometimes act like it isn't?

I came away from the recent Amplify Alliance National NFP Summit this August in Canberra with lots of notes.

But one thought kept coming back to me: The not-for-profit sector is simply too big to ignore. Yet sometimes it still acts as though it’s on the margins.

The latest Australian Charities Report makes the scale pretty hard to dispute.

Australian charities employ 1.6 million people (around 11% of the Australian workforce). They engage 3.9 million volunteers and generate $239 billion in annual revenue. More Australians are employed by charities than in manufacturing, construction or retail trade.

These aren't niche numbers. They describe a substantial part of Australia's workforce, economy and social infrastructure.

And that is before trying to quantify the less tangible things the NFP sector creates every day: trust, connection, belonging, participation and stronger communities. Explore the latest Australian Charities Report

The sector is essential infrastructure, not an afterthought

That idea came through powerfully in Violet Roumeliotis' inaugural National Not-for-Profit Oration.

Her challenge was that not-for-profits are often relied upon when communities face their hardest moments, but are still brought into policy discussions too late, funded too narrowly and treated more like contracted providers than partners in shaping the system.

Her description of the sector as essential social infrastructure stayed with me. Because infrastructure needs investment.

We don't build a bridge and assume maintaining it is wasteful overhead. We don't run a hospital without systems, technology, leadership and workforce capability.

Yet in the not-for-profit sector, investment in those very things can still require justification.

Technology. Data. Governance. Organisational development. Strategy. Workforce capability. Evaluation.

Too often they are treated as costs around the work rather than part of what makes good work possible.

That has implications for NFP funding strategy, but also for the choices individual organisations make. A sustainable organisation needs to invest in the infrastructure that allows it to keep delivering its purpose.

From delivering services to shaping systems

Another line I tripled underlined in my notes from the Summit was:

Shape systems, not just services.

I think this is an important challenge for not-for-profit strategic planning.

Most strategies understandably focus on the organisation: its services, people, finances, growth and operations.

But for organisations working on entrenched social issues, the biggest determinants of success often sit outside their organisational boundaries.

Policy. Commissioning. Funding. Housing. Workforce. Community infrastructure. Public attitudes. The way different institutions work together.

So, a strong NFP strategy also needs to ask:

What conditions are you trying to change? Where do we have influence? Who do we need to work with? And what role should we play in shaping the system around us?

That does not mean every organisation needs to become a peak body or policy organisation. It means recognising that delivering another program within a system that continually recreates the same problem can only take us so far.

A sector acting its size

There was another challenge running through the Summit day that I found uncomfortable in a useful way.

The sector is very good at advocating for communities. It is sometimes less comfortable advocating for itself.

This can manifest in small ways: being hesitant about talking about organisational success, accepting unrealistic commissioning arrangements, underinvesting in organisational capability, or allowing government and others to define the sector primarily through the services it purchases from it.

Acting its size isn't about becoming louder for the sake of it.

• It is about recognising the contribution, expertise and agency already sitting within the sector;

• it means entering discussions with government as a source of knowledge, not simply a recipient of policy;

• it means investing in capability without apologising for doing so;

• it means recognising that good governance and strategy implementation require resources; and

• it means finding ways to exercise collective power rather than expecting individual organisations to solve structural problems by themselves.

The Australian Government's Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint (led in a sector partnership by Amplify Alliance Australia) provides a useful longer-term frame. It is deliberately a ten-year agenda, covering the operating and regulatory environment, a people-led and purpose-driven sector, and the capability required for the sector to adapt and lead into the future. Read the Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint

That longer horizon matters. Funding cycles may be three years. Government terms may be shorter. Annual operational planning still needs to happen.

But the challenges the sector is working on don't conveniently reset at the end of a contract.

Perhaps the starting point is recognising what already exists

Amplify's Summit was called The Sector That Sustains Australia. That doesn't feel like hyperbole.

There is rightly plenty of discussion about what the sector needs to improve: collaboration, governance, productivity, measurement, capability and financial sustainability among them.

The sector needs to continue having these conversations. But perhaps it also need to start from a position of strength.

This is a sector employing one in nine Australian workers. A sector supported by millions of volunteers. A sector embedded in communities across the country. A sector carrying enormous expertise about some of Australia's most complex problems.

The question is not whether the sector matters. It is whether the sector fully recognises that and what it chooses to do with that collective power.